'Humble Indie Bundle' Tops $1 Million, Goes Open-Source

The pay-what-you-want "Humble Indie Bundle" continues to see massive success, and as it tops $1 million in contributions, the developers of some of the games included have pledged to go open-source with their game code. The "Humble Indie Bundle" initiative, spearheaded by Wolfire Games, allows consumers to pay what they want for a six-game indie bundle, with the option of giving all proceeds to charity. Of the $1,139,087 raised to date, contributors have allocated 30.93 percent, or $352,334, to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play Charity. "Now it's our turn to give back," says Wolfire on the official site, pledging Seumas McNally Grand Prize winner Aquaria from Bit Blot, Cryptic Sea's 2005 IGF grand prize winner Gish, Wolfire's own Lugaru HD and Frictional Games' Penumbra: Overture aim to go open source as of May 11. Lugaru is already available open-source: "The code is still a little rough (no Visual Studio project yet, for instance) but hopefully with the help of the community we can rapidly make it more accessible to everyone," says Wolfire. The bundle also contains 2D Boy's multiple IGF category award winner World of Goo and Amanita Design's Samarost 2. Buyers can choose any amount of money to pay for the pack. They can then decide how to allocate their contribution, among either or both of the two charities and among the developers of the games. Combined, the DRM-free games are valued at around $80 if purchased separately. Contributions ramped up rapidly over the past week and a half, growing from about $40,000 on May 4 to around $700,000 at the beginning of this week. The total number of contributions has now reached 124,447 buyers.